


what's left is only you

by doorwaytoparadise



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Getting Together, Introspection and reflection, M/M, Post-Canon, i had a lot of Feelings i was trying to get out, not so much fluffy as Thinking Deep Romantic Thoughts about each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 20:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19325968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doorwaytoparadise/pseuds/doorwaytoparadise
Summary: The Apocalypse has come and gone and when all is said and done, Aziraphale and Crowley still have each other.





	what's left is only you

**Author's Note:**

> "only you, when the sun and moon and stars are gone, what's left is only you."  
> -Answer Me from the musical The Band's Visit

**i. sun**

There is an afternoon that Aziraphale turns a corner and finds Crowley asleep. This isn’t in itself out of the ordinary, as Aziraphale has found Crowley asleep plenty of times and in plenty of places before. But before, he wouldn’t usually sleep away time they spent together, careful and limited as it was. But before, he hadn’t ever looked quite so at ease, even nestled among a familiar place like Aziraphale’s shelves. But before, there hadn’t been freedom from opposing sides, no longer a carefully-stepped dance between them, and Aziraphale would never have let himself so openly look.

Crowley is draped over a chair by one of the bookshop’s windows, long limbs in a sprawl that still manages to look dignified. His glasses are on a stack of books nearby, and his jacket is tossed over the back of the chair, shed in the wake of the sunlight currently pouring in from the window. 

The light warms the air and gives it an orange-tinted kind of glow, something almost hazy and romantic about the way it fills the space. Aziraphale watches the dust particles float in the air for a moment, before, like a compass drawn north, his eyes are drawn to Crowley. The sunlight dips over him like liquid, pooling in the angles of his face and lighting up all his edges, making soft where he’s normally sharp. It spills into his hair, turns it to fire, to gold, and Aziraphale finds his breath leaving him in a rush.

Aziraphale knows love. He’s an angel and that’s just a part of what they are, how they were created. He’s been on earth long enough to have felt all the different ways people feel love; for other people, of course, lovers and families and friends, but also for things, for places, for concepts and memories and dreams. 

Aziraphale knows love. He loves humanity and food and books and peaceful days. He loves widely with his whole being and lets it hum like background noise, settles it around him for all the millennia he has been alive. But to be _in_ love is something else entirely. It is deep and overwhelming, terrifying and beautiful, like standing on a mountaintop while a thunderstorm is rolling in. Aziraphale knows love and he knows being in love, and the distinction has never really been more clear than when he’s standing in the doorway watching Crowley sleep in his bookshop like it is the safest place in the world.

There are markers of a shared existence all over - his shop, his living space, Crowley’s flat - if he looks. Little things: mugs and clothing and spaces cleared for the other, plants beside first editions and books in the flat. Their lives overlap now more than ever, and Aziraphale finds he is no longer surprised when Crowley is beside him while he’s in the kitchen, or at his own comfort among the stark walls at Crowley’s place. Sunlight curves around them both now, a moment of stillness in this strange new _thing_ they’ve built between them, and Aziraphale manages to catch his breath.

Aziraphale knows love, and it is all the little ways Crowley has slotted himself into Aziraphale’s life like he’s belonged there since the beginning.

 

**ii. moon**

There is a night that Crowley finds himself wandering into the park alone. He meanders lazily down a familiar path, letting his legs take him where they want while his mind drifts. He’s feeling restless, enough to go walking in the middle of the night, head too full of thoughts that won’t settle. Part of him wants to go find Aziraphale, to wrap himself in the comforting familiarity of the angel’s presence and let himself forget about the rest of the world. But another part can’t sit still, especially since the angel in question is to blame for his mood.

Crowley passes the bench they had shared just the day prior, and makes it maybe four steps past before he turns back. He stares at the unassuming structure, simple and worn and utterly unremarkable, except for the fact that Aziraphale had been sat there when he had abruptly tilted Crowley’s world on its axis.

‘ _You know, my dear,_ ’ he had said casually, peering up at the sky, ‘ _I rather think we might be like the sun and moon._ ’

Crowley had only eyed him skeptically, huffing, ‘ _How poetic. And of course you’re the sun, angel-_ ’

‘ _Oh no,_ ’ Aziraphale had murmured primly, ‘ _no, I rather think you’re the sun._ ’

Crowley had gaped, flustered and a little lost over whatever Aziraphale was trying to say, but the angel hadn’t elaborated, smiling and changing the subject, and Crowley had been too thrown to pursue it. 

So now he stood in that same spot, still turning Aziraphale’s words over in his head and not finding any more sense in them than he had before. Crowley had no idea where Aziraphale was coming from, claiming him as the sun between the two of them. Crowley was a demon, he was evil and darkness and hellfire, he was _Fallen_. Aziraphale was light and goodness, so bright it almost hurt to look at. How the angel could think Crowley was the sun was beyond him. 

With an aggravated sigh, Crowley dropped onto the bench and tilted his head back to stare at the moon, which, of course, was the moment Crowley heard footsteps approaching. Suppressing a groan, he tilted his head to see who was invading his quiet moment, and promptly sat up straight. 

Aziraphale was walking towards him, his usual coat making him stand out sharply in the moonlit night. Crowley could only watch as Aziraphale approached, a hundred questions running through his mind. ‘ _how did he find me what is he doing here I didn’t tell him where I was-_ ’, all of which quieted when Aziraphale finally stood before him, and none of which he actually voiced. He only stared, astonished. 

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale begins, soft and fond and so very gentle that Crowley feels _something_ twisting in his chest. ‘Crowley.’ Aziraphale says again, a little firmer, like there’s intent behind every syllable, and stops there.

Crowley can only keep staring, tracing the outline of Aziraphale with his eyes. The light of the full moon shines off the white and cream and tan of his clothes, blurring him at the edges, and giving him a soft sort of glow. His hair too, is bright in the moon’s light, and there’s almost something of a halo around him, and its like all his ethereal presence is leaking out of him, too much for a mere human body to contain. Aziraphale always radiates light, lets it come tumbling from his hands, his heart, his smile, like he doesn’t know the sublimity of it, how overwhelming it can be. Crowley can only stand before it and hope he doesn’t crumble.

Aziraphale takes a seat beside him, and despite his conflicted thoughts of earlier, it’s easy to be here, next to Aziraphale. It is, Crowley assumes, the result of six thousand years, of knowing the other in ways no other being did, in the comfort of a single constant, of reliability. Of _ineffability_ really, because a demon and angel should have been enemies but instead became friends, and no one really knows why, least of all them. All of human history stretches out behind them, but in front of them now as well, because they looked the end of the world in the face and watched as it was thwarted by an eleven year old, and the future was suddenly something they could have. 

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s hands between both of his, grounds him to the moment with the contact, reminds him that that future has so much to offer, if only he takes a chance. The world seems to still, a pivotal choice looming, and maybe he’s wrong, but he really doesn’t think he is. Crowley takes a deep breath and makes a leap of faith.

‘You said I was the sun.’ 

Crowley’s words break the quiet between them, almost intrusive, but Aziraphale’s eyes jump to meet his, open and inviting, and Crowley forges on.

‘You said I was the sun.’ Crowley repeats, ‘I don’t-, what did you mean?’

Aziraphale watches him for a moment, something piercing in his gaze that seems to cut right through Crowley’s defenses.

‘What I meant,’ Aziraphale says at last, ‘is that I would be lost in the dark without you, my dear.’

He says it with so much sincerity, with conviction, like he’s stating a fact as sure as gravity, and Crowley feels like he’s breaking open. He took a leap of faith and Aziraphale caught him.

Moonlight catches in Aziraphale’s eyes, turns the blue nearly silver, and makes them shine even brighter. Aziraphale is something vast and ancient and powerful, wrapped in tartan and tea. Aziraphale is soft and quiet, a candlelit dinner, low music drifting from the distance. He is a gentle touch in the darkness, reassurance and a steady presence, dappled moonlight in the park, and Crowley blazes all the more brightly in return.

 

**iii. stars**

Crowley had hung the stars once, dusted his hands in galaxies and traced the orbits of planets. Dragged his hand through empty space and left gleaming trails of color, nebulas blooming beneath his palm. 

Crowley still loved the stars, stared up at the sky sometimes with something like wistfulness on his face. Occasionally, Aziraphale or him would find reason for both of them to venture outside the city, where light pollution vanished and the presence of human life thinned. The world opened wide above them, and Crowley drank it in like the finest of wines.

Aziraphale knew this, just like he knew that there was very little Crowley remembered from before he fell, and how much he still ached several thousand years later. Aziraphale also knew Crowely clung to the stars because it was something beautiful he had helped create, and that mattered to him.

There were nights they lay in bed together, Aziraphale tucked against Crowley’s chest, head under his chin, and Crowley would trace his fingers over Aziraphale’s back. His touch was gentle, but sure, marking points and lines across Aziraphale’s shoulders, down his spine. He would quietly whisper the names of constellations into Aziraphale’s hair, and Aziraphale would stare into the darkness of the room, wondering about the sky, the earth; about falling. He would think about Alpha Centauri. 

Crowley draws a star map onto his back with nothing more than his memory and his touch, but the soft, careful way he does it is like fire trailing from his fingertips. He presses feather-light kisses on Aziraphale’s skin; collarbone, jawline, temple. His lips feel like burning, like Crowley is dropping new stars from his tongue with each point of contact, and Aziraphale is a blank canvas, empty sky for Crowley to fill however he pleases.

Aziraphale wants to say something, something affirming or sentimental, wants to tell Crowley he would have run away with him, really, but he had had to try. He wants to say ' _you're the center of my universe and I'm caught in your orbit'_. He wants to say ' _everything in my life up until now has been worth it just for this_ '. He wants to say ' _I love you, have always loved you, will love you until the end of everything and planets collide and stars collapse,_ ', but Crowley kisses at his pulse point and steals the words before they can form.

Aziraphale has thought before about falling, about what might send him tumbling from grace. He has wondered in the deep recesses of his mind, if he might be damned already, with how he's let himself get so tangled up in Crowley, they can't possibly break away. He wondered, some small part of him, if he would regret it, falling for the sin of loving a demon, and terrifying himself with not knowing the answer. But love surely couldn't be wrong and he hasn't fallen yet, and anyway, it was all irrelevant now. They were their own side, and the realization of what that meant had sent them spinning headlong into something beyond heaven and hell.

Here, nestled in darkness like its a universe still being born, they make their own sky. Crowley, Aziraphale, and the burning bright newness of this tender intimacy between them. The sun, the moon, the stars. Crowley looks like fire, all red hair and gold eyes in the dim light of the room, and Aziraphale wants to be consumed. There is no falling when they're here, together, suspended in time and space. Like the vast span of the universe, like infinity is all spun down into the breaths between them, everything could fall away and the two of them would remain.


End file.
